Summer Funding

One question was asked, can we find out earlier about summer funding? The answer is no, because that funding depends on making sure students don’t already have summer funding.

There was mention of encouraging grads to help mentor honors undergrad students in exchange for summer support. There are lots of honors undergrads and not enough labs for them to work in. The incentive was given as $1500 per undergrad, but this is still a work in progress.

Tsitsi: What if, for example, you’re going to Belize for the summer?

Nanci thinks the money could be deferred, or undergrads could be employed while the advisory grad student is away, doing unsupervised work.

Susan Herrick: Does this include SURF funding? Can we take on SURF undergrads for the $1500 incentive?

The money should still be available for grads who mentor SURF undergrads.

Nanci: The powers-that-be have been touting the honors program, but they have no place for them to work. The money would come from the honors program.

Nanci: Grads should push for this program. Undergrads need a faculty mentor to conduct summer research, but faculty are often too busy to sign on. Grads could bridge the gap and be the effective mentor for these students.

Nanci reminded us that this is currently just an idea that Janine Caira is kicking around, and it is not yet full-fledged.

Building Update

Building update: TLS will not be torn down. There is the potential for a new EEB building where the greenhouses are currently, but it won’t be very big.

Admissions Update

Admissions update: There will be 10 new students in the fall.

We’re a bit over budget for supporting grad students. We’re often over budget, so no worries.

The university approved a 3% grad pay raise. Be glad because it almost didn't happen, but letters of support had already been sent out.

At the same time they hired 300-400 new administrators.

Graduate Student Unionization

There is a bill in the Connecticut legislature now to allow graduate students to unionize (mentioned by Carl Schaefer). The bill is expected to pass. If it passes, afterwards we will have the option to form a union at some time in the future.

The AAUP has offered, if we want to unionize, to help us set up and organize.

Nanci, who has a strong pro-union stance from growing up in Detroit, thinks unionizing is important. For example, she remembers the cohort of 2003, when people were talking about how great the grad student health insurance was. Shortly thereafter, grads were not considered state employees in one crucial component, for the purpose of health insurance. The university saved us in the end, but having a union could have been effective in that situation.

Krissa: There was talk then (in the GSS) about forming a union. But at the time it was illegal.

Susan Herrick: It could cost us.

Nanci: At the University of Michigan, grads were able to bargain for 12 months of pay, and a maximum of two semesters teaching for their entire tenure.

Nicola Plowes: Less time as a TA could amount to shorter tenure as a grad student, thus less cost for university overall.

The final MES of the semester will be on April 30. The speaker will be Ivan Castro-Arellano, a postdoc of Mike Willig. The MES still needs to find a faculty home to host. Mike Willig has not responded yet, and he lives pretty far away.

There was a change discussed for Cindi Jones' EEB 276 (Plant Anatomy) class. There is a wish to change the number of lab hours. Currently, the lab for this course meets twice per week for 2 hours each time. The proposal is to change this to one lab session per week, with the total time reduced from 4 hours to 3.5 hours. The single longer lab period will allow more thorough investigation of the material presented.

[There was confusion at the meeting of this announcement being about Cindi Jones' Developmental Plant Morphology class, which Jessica Budke and Em Komisky refuted.]

You have probably noticed the GSA meeting minutes are committed to EEBedia. When I do that, I put a link by everyone's name who speaks or gets mentioned. Links that don't go anywhere are red and uninformative. I suggest that everyone with an EEBedia account (i.e., everybody) should give themselves a personal page, even as brief as to list their contact information. It is much simpler to link within EEBedia than to link to external sites like personal pages on the EEB site. Some great examples of personal sites on EEBedia are those of Carrie Fyler, Molly Letsch, and Amy Weiss, who has started a page of songs about plants. Any contributions you can make to reduce the number of red links are greatly appreciated.

Pat Anderson sent an email around asking if grads wanted to talk about funding, dispersal of funds, and reporting funding to the government. For example, what is the best way to get your Bamford Funds dispersed so you have access to them and are minimally taxed. Many students were interested in having that meeting. It was voted on and decided to have the meeting Monday next week, during the 1-2pm time slot that Pat has available. Stay tuned for an email from Jessica confirming the time.

Tsitsi: There is form 970 from the IRS to report scholarships and grants.